


Cleaning Day

by quillquiver



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cas hurts his ankle, Dean loves cleaning and power ballads, Fluff, Grumpy Castiel (Supernatural), Human Castiel (Supernatural), Idiots in Love, M/M, Snarky Castiel (Supernatural), excessive use of 80s power ballads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 22:49:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20553962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quillquiver/pseuds/quillquiver
Summary: Dean keeps a clean house.





	Cleaning Day

**Author's Note:**

> Wooooow it's been forever hasn't it? Please accept this brief and silly thing as an apology for my inattention.

Dean keeps a clean house: no crumbs on the counter, no dishes in the sink, no wet towels on the bathroom tile. It’s not clean enough to eat off the ground, but it’s pretty damn close—and why not? Dean’s slept on termite-eaten floors, smelly mattresses, and carpets he thought were grey but had, at one point, been totally white. He’s taken showers in motel bathrooms streaked with mold only to lie in bed and count more black dots on water-stained drywall. One time, Dean found a used condom between his sheets.

Though the Impala is always kept meticulously clean, the kinds of places Dean stays aren’t ones that offer housekeeping every day—and that’s by design. Sure, the place may have roaches, but if a joint looks like it’s falling apart, it probably means nobody asks questions.

When he gets in at three a.m. covered in blood and viscera, not asking questions is key.

It’s different now that they have their own place. For one, it’s more space than Dean can ever remember having, even compared to Bobby’s sprawling junkyard and Sonny’s huge lot. The bunker was built for at least a dozen nerdy dudes, not their little rag-tag family. Their elbows don’t brush at the table, they aren’t squished on one couch for movie night, and Dean has his own room. It’s fucking incredible; that first night, he ate dinner in bed totally naked, and watched trash TV in-between bouts of jerking off until he passed the fuck out.

The walls are made of concrete. Shit’s practically _soundproof_. 

Dean keeps mementos on the shelf above his bed, and books on his desk, and carefully props up his family pictures. He dusts. He vacuums. He’s a regular fucking June Cleaver, complete with homemade meals from a real goddamn kitchen.

But cleaning the kitchen was last week’s project—this week, it’s the library.

There’s something about scrubbing a thing spotless that makes Dean feel… good. No matter what, he can make a floor shine and dust all the books and leave everything looking brand new. He can bring order to things. When Sam’s really annoyed, he likes to go on and on about how Dean’s need for cleanliness is a manifestation of his poor self-image. How it’s a way to “literally erase” all his “perceived shortcomings and mistakes.”

Dean thinks Sam took one psych class at Stanford and thinks he has a whole goddamn degree on the subject.

Cleaning isn’t about righting past wrongs or gaining control or any of that crap. It’s not even about taking care of his family, though that’s why he started in the first place; Dad may have been fine with leaving two kids in a room carpeted with cigarette butts, but Sam put everything in his mouth back then, and Dean wasn’t about to let him choke to death.

Bottom line: cleaning’s not some fancy coping mechanism. It’s fucking relaxing. Dean puts on his music, grabs his rubber gloves—pink, because Sam’s an asshole—and goes to town. Sam and Cas create mess faster than a shifter during puberty, but on Saturday mornings they make their excuses and get the hell outta dodge. That suits Dean fine.

Cleaning never clears his head the same way when there’s people around.

Sighing, Dean turns off the vacuum and looks around: books have been put away; shelves, tables, chairs and lamps’ve been dusted; baseboards cleaned; floor vacuumed… only thing left is to mop.

Dean fucking loves mopping. It’s the best cleaning activity: he’s mobile enough to dance along to his music and it’s not noisy so he can feel the bass in his chest. He puts goes to fill a bucket and then crouches in the only corner of the room with an accessible plug. His cleaning playlist is by far the best he’s ever made: three hours of power ballads and pop music that Sam would tease him to hell and back for. But Sam’s not here, and neither is Cas, so Dean’s gonna blast ‘I Want To Know What Love Is’ and have a grand old time mopping along.

The song has a nice, slow build, so Dean follows: mouthing along to the words, swaying to the music but taking it easy, making it last. Songs like this, they’re a marathon; you gotta build to a satisfying conclusion. So Dean paces himself. He starts moving with a little more oomph, bringing some hand gestures in, singing a little, even though he’s tone deaf. And the song builds, and Dean gets more into it. Steps, now, with some jumping and using the mop as a prop. More intense hand movements.

And then, finally…

“_I WANNA KNOW WHAT LOVE IS… BA WOW WOW **WOW**. I WANT YOU TO SHOW ME._”

He fucking loses it: eyes closed, brows furrowed, singing into the mop handle like he’s in front of a stadium of people and not the twelve empty chairs in the library. His left hand comes up to his chest and fists sweaty material of his shirt as he belts out with his entire friggin’ body:

“_I WANNA FEEL WHAT LOVE IS… I KNOW YOU CAN SHOW ME!”_

Dean spins around, bopping his head with an _oohhohhh_ that comes straight from his gut. His hips swivel, he gyrates, he pushes the mop around in time with the music, yanking it back in an action so over-the-top and ridiculous he can’t help but grin. The mop is his lover, then his mic, then a stupid prop for balance so he can kick out a leg and not fall over. He spins and catches the handle before it clatters to the ground. Every expression on his face is ten times bigger than it has to be, and he moves his ass to the beat, filling his lungs with air to belt out the chorus again, hand pulling down into a fist as he turns and—

“**_FUCK_**.”

Dean slips on a wet spot, kicking over the bucket as he tries to stay upright and losing his grip on the mop, which hits Cas in the stupid face. Cas, who had apparently been _watching him_, and who, at the same time, had rushed forward to try and stop Dean from falling on his ass. Dean doesn’t fall. Cas does.

Cas falls on his ankle.

The music’s still blaring so Dean can’t hear shit, but the way Cas is holding his foot and looking all pinched means the dude’s in pain. Wincing, Dean slip-slides over to him, kneeling and murmuring his apologies as he tries to pry his fingers away: “Shit, Cas. Fuck, you just scared me, dude. Let go for a sec, I gotta see—Sorry—”

“I’m _fine_.” His voice is gritty and hissed into the side of Dean’s head, and Dean rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, you look it, too.” His heart’s doing a real good impression of a hummingbird, cheeks hot as hell as Dean clears his throat and tries not to think about what Cas just caught him doing. “Doesn’t seem broken, but can you move your foot?”

Clenching his jaw, Cas wriggles his toes and moves his foot up and down, looking at Dean as if daring him to say he’ll be out of commission. Sam can bitch and moan about how bad a patient Dean is ‘til the cows come home, but ever since falling, Cas has been ten times worse. Dean gets it—or, he can imagine; can’t be easy waiting for shit to heal now that his grace is gone for good. Dean puts a palm firm and flat against the sole of Cas’s foot, moving it around to test his mobility and see where he hurts and where he doesn’t; for all his bitching and moaning about how he’s fine and nothing’s wrong and this is a waste of time, his discomfort is plain. “Okay, well, you can quit whining,” Dean says, pursing his lips when he moves and Cas’s breath fucking _stutters_. “It’s a sprained ankle, not the end of the world.”

Castiel snarls like an angry suburbanite demanding to speak to the manager. “Of course you’d say that,” he spits. “You’re not going to be the one left behind on hunts, and prescribed bedrest, and… and be treated like some kind of invalid for the next three months!”

“It ain’t gonna take three months to heal, Cas. Give it two weeks, tops.”

“Then two weeks! This entire thing is _ridiculous_. How am I supposed to _do anything_? I can’t be too hot or too cold otherwise my body revolts. If I get hit too hard, my body revolts. If I _move a certain way_ my body _revolts_! My stomach doesn’t like dairy even though cheese is delicious, and I can’t drink coffee without feeling ill, and everything is just… it’s just—” He clenches his jaw, glassy eyes blinking rapidly. “It wasn’t hard like this, last time.”

“Yeah well, last time you got laid.”

Cas narrows his eyes, a blush rising high on his cheeks as he scoffs, turns away, frowns. He looks a little lost and confused, and his shoulders hike up to touch his ears, and Dean wonders when the fuck he’s gonna stop putting his foot in his mouth. So yeah, maybe he was a little jealous of April, and then a little jealous of Norah—and maybe he’s been pissed at Cas for keeping that period in his life so under wraps—but it’s not like Dean has a freaking leg to stand on. If Cas wants to get quiet and cagey about sleeping with a reaper, that’s fair… and if he suddenly wants to go around asking pretty girls out on dates, he can do that, too; Lord knows the amount of shit Dean still hasn’t told him could fill nine volumes and ten years’ worth of fuckin’ therapy. Besides, he kicked the guy out in the first place, right? Not by choice, but he still _did it_. Can’t blame Cas for keeping his brief foray into humanity from the guy who told him _you can’t stay_. Hell, it’s probably smart that he keeps a go-bag in his closet, now.

Coughing just for something to break the damn silence, Dean stares hard at Castiel’s foot. He’s pretty sure he’s blushing like a priest in a whorehouse, but at this point, it’s hard to tell. He’s just gotta—he’s just gotta focus. Fix up Cas’s ankle. Send him on his way. Sweep the whole goddamn ordeal under the rug. They’ll never talk about it again. Hell, he’ll start right now. 

“Shouldn’t put any weight on it.”  
  
Dean is real careful about not looking at Cas when he says that, and not looking at him for everything comes after. He’s not totally sure why he doesn’t just help Castiel stand up and get him to a chair, but the first thing his arms do is wrap around him like he’s gonna carry him across the threshold of their wedding suite, and at that point it’s too late to brush shit off. So Dean commits.

Unfortunately, no one was kind enough to inform him that the dorky dude who spends his free time laughing at the inaccuracies in encyclopedias is also _a secret beefcake_ under his baggy novelty pjs.

Dean almost throws out his back trying to lift him.

“My hero,” Cas says, looking slightly less murderous in the wake of Dean’s complete and utter fucking embarrassment.

“Get in a chair, _Sass-_tiel,” Dean grunts. He’s pretty sure there are cherry tomatoes less red than his face, but it’s a little easier to handle everything under a thick layer of douchey sarcasm. “I’ll be back with an ace bandage.”

“You said I shouldn’t put any weight on it.”

“Weren’t you Mr. Strategy Man for the feathery fuck brigade?” Dean shoots back. “Figure it out.”

While Cas grumps about living with _fucking philistines_ and how much responsibility he _actually_ had and what he _actually_ did, Dean goes to the bathroom for the med kit and splashes water on his face. He doesn’t look at himself in the mirror.

The thing is that he and Cas make a great team; stick ‘em in the middle of a salt n’burn, or an apocalypse, or hell, a friggin’ time-fucked warzone, and they’re a well-oiled machine. Sure, they push each other, and they argue, but at the end of the day they just… click. 

It’s everything else that’s the goddamn problem.

Sam throws around the words ‘repressed’ and ‘emotionally constipated’ when it gets bad—and these days, it’s been bad _a lot_—but the problem is just that… Cas is great. And grumpy. And an asshole.

And Dean has no idea how to talk to him.

Sure, he’s been trying, but the learning curve for this shit is damn slow—mostly because Dean’s spent a whole lot of his life trying to be the son his daddy wanted, and Cas had been taught not to feel from moment he manifested however many billions of years ago. On the one hand, it’s great: Dean knew from the get-go that their crazy pretty much matches up… on the other, old habits die hard—and they die even harder when you’ve got an equally stubborn, hotheaded dickbag also not talking. About anything. Ever.

Dude’s like a surly octogenarian in a nursing home.

By the time Dean’s back in the library, _Alone _by Heart is playing, and Cas is sitting morosely in a chair and staring at his ankle like it murdered his sister or something. Dean carefully ignores this, not because he’s an asshole, but because experience dictates that getting between that look and whatever it’s directed at spells trouble with a capital T. ‘Course, it used to be more effective when the dude could actually smite things, but the glare’s still impressive. 

Dean kneels again and carefully pulls Cas’s foot into his lap, frowning and trying _real hard_ not to think about how close it is to his junk. That’s the other thing; shit like this would’ve never bothered him like six years ago, but sometime between stabbing the fucker in a barn and carrying his mortal, unconscious body home, Dean kinda, y’know… fell in love with Cas. A little.  
  
Enough that he’s trying to ignore how goddamn easy it would be to just lean up and kiss him.

“Good to go.” Dean taps Cas’s ankle for good measure after he’s done, trying not to let his fingers linger on the bandage. He stays stock still when Cas leans in to inspect his handiwork, giving a contemplative hum because he’s the biggest drama queen this side of the milky way. Dean’s urge to kiss him stupid makes him reckless—he looks up, mouth open to make some smartass comment that dies on his tongue because—well, because.

Even after all this time, Cas looks at him like he’s something _more_.

Dean swallows past the sudden dryness in his throat, palms turning sweaty as Cas’s baby blues drift down to… holy shit, to Dean’s mouth. Dean can’t stop himself from licking his lips nervously in response, and Cas—Dean’s heart races. That was Cas’s breath hitching. Holy shit, he’s coming closer. Are they gonna…?

“…I really enjoyed your performance.”

Dean’s shoulders hunch to his hairline. His heart simultaneously sinks and jumps into his throat. Where before there’d be no question as to Cas’s earnestness, humanity has given him a short temper, a penchant for sarcasm, and a mean streak about a mile wide. Dean’s cheeks flare and his palms sweat and he jerks away, blinking rapidly. “Shut up.” When he gets up and stumbles backwards, knocking the mop clear across the floor, Cas looks startled.

“Dean, you know I was just—”

“Bein’ a total dick ‘cause you’re pissed you got hurt?” He whirls around, glaring in a move that is way more confident than he feels. Fuck trying to be a “patient and thoughtful communicator.” Dean is fucking done. “What, you gonna tease me ‘bout how I dress like a douchey sixteen year-old next? Fuck you, Cas.” 

The asshole actually has the decency to look a little embarrassed at that, so Dean takes the opportunity to make what he hopes is a dignified exit.

’Course, shit’s never that simple; Dean hears a hiss and thump and would you friggin’ know it, Cas is trying to ruin his handiwork by fucking hobbling towards him. He’s limping like the saddest sack to ever sack, saying “Dean,” all urgent, like he actually gives a shit—

“The hell’re you doing?! You’re gonna make it worse, you—mmph!”

Cas plants one on him; clumsy and with too much teeth. It’s probably the worst first kiss of Dean’s life: Cas is overbalanced because of his ankle, the hand grabbing the back of Dean’s shirt is pulling the fabric so tightly it’s choking him, and Dean’s strangled exclamation of shock seems to have given Cas the idea that he wants his entire tongue in his mouth… but he pulls away looking so goddamn bashful Dean can’t say a word against him.

…’Sides, he looks good with pink so high in his cheeks.

“I liked the performance,” Cas says, earnestly this time.

Despite the blush of his own cheeks, Dean clears his throat and rolls his eyes, muttering a “whatever” as he tries to step back. He needs to think, probably. This is just. A lot. And he needs—he needs to think over what just happened because that kind of… of display could mean a million things, probably, and—

Cas continues to hold tight to the back of his shirt. “I’m serious.”

Dean can’t meet his eyes.

“Dean.”

It’s actually heinous, the way Cas catches his eye; a mirror to the first time Dean’d done it all those years ago, in a green room made of gold. Slowly. Deliberately.

And then Cas leans forward and gives Dean the best kiss of his life.

His mouth is soft and wet from the last one, his hand having eased up now that he’s not in danger of falling on his ass. Cas buries one hand in the hem of Dean’s shirt near his lower back, the other moving up to trace the edge of his jaw. It’s tame—chaste and sweet and missing the pressure from before; like Dean’s some precious thing he’s choosing to handle with care. And yeah, sure, Dean’s had a whole lot of kisses—good ones and bad ones and mediocre ones of all kinds. He should be a kissing connoisseur by now. But this? This is… this is a black hole asking for permission. This is a friggin’ hurricane professing its love to a butterfly. This is—this is _insane_. They’re still wearing all their clothes and Dean can feel Cas in the root of his heart.

Dean doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Which is why it makes sense when Cas pulls away looking more nervous than when he’d admitted to working with Crowley. “…I’m told reciprocal physical affection is customary in this situation.”

“Asshole,” Dean says. He isn’t sure what the hell he’s saying or doing or what’s happening, but whatever it is, he’s a huge fan. And it looks like Cas is, too, by how hard he’s smiling. Makes it impossible for Dean to kiss anything but the corner of his mouth. He trails fingers up Dean’s arms and Dean shivers.

“I_ love_ the douchey sixteen year-old look.”

Dean blushes harder, ducking into Cas’s neck to escape his gaze. Long fingers immediately burying in lighter hair, grabbing on more tightly as Dean hitches up Cas’s right thigh to take weight off his injured ankle. He pulls a little to regain his balance and Dean squeaks: “Y-Yeah?”

“Mhm.” A hand on his bicep now, squeezing. “I can see your arms.”

Dean grins. “You’re such a weirdo.”

As if to prove this fact, Cas starts to sway to the music, murmuring off-key lyrics in the general direction of Dean’s freckled ear. “_’Til now, I always got by on my own… mmhmhmhmhmhm until I met you… nanana chills me to the bone, how do I get you aloooone?_” Dean muffles his smile against Cas’s cheek. “_How do I get you alone?_” Cas nips the bolt of his jaw and says, too monotone to be taken totally seriously: “I hope we dance to this at our wedding.”

Dean blushes to high fucking heaven. He also smiles like a lunatic.

“Shut up, Cas,” he says all affection and embarrassment. 

Castiel bites back his own gummy smile. “Make me.”

Dean does.


End file.
